How to get someone's IP address safely and legally

If you're wondering how to get someone's IP, you're in the right place. Today we're going to break it down in a simple and clear way so you actually understand what's going on.

But hold your horses, cowboy, this is not a hacking guide and it's definitely not about stalking, harassing, or exposing anyone. We're going to explain what an IP address really is, what it can realistically show you, and why privacy and basic respect matter way more than trying to track people. By the end, you'll get the technical side and the clear boundaries that should never be crossed.

Quick answer (TL;DR)

If you're asking how to get someone's IP, the honest answer is this: you usually can't, unless you control the system they are connecting to.

You're able to see a user's IP when:

• You run the website, app, or server they are accessing (in this case, check a few code samples below)
• You manage the network infrastructure
• You have proper legal authority

You cannot legally or reliably "pull" someone's personal IP from a random chat message or social media profile. Platforms typically do not expose that data to other users. And even if you do see an IP, it only gives you basic network information, not a full identity.

What you can easily get is the IP address of a public website or server. Every domain name like example.com has to resolve to an IP address through DNS (in practice this might be more complex but let's keep it simple), otherwise the internet would not know where to send traffic. So looking up the IP behind example.com is normal and part of how the web works. That tells you about the server or hosting infrastructure behind the domain, not automatically about the individual who registered it. Domain ownership details come from registrar records, not from the IP address itself.

The real takeaway is this: only collect IP addresses when you have a clear, legitimate reason and when it complies with local laws. Consent and transparency matter.

If privacy is your concern, it is often smarter to focus on protecting your own connection instead. For example, you can learn more about options in this guide on How to hide my IP address for free.

Understanding IP addresses, privacy, and limits

So, what's an IP address?

Alright, let's make this super simple. Think about an IP (Internet Protocol) address like a phone number for your device, whether it's your PC, laptop, or smartphone. When you call someone, there's a country code, maybe an operator code, and then the actual number. It doesn't tell you the exact apartment someone is sitting in, but it tells the system where to route the call. An IP works the same way. It helps the internet know where to send the data.

In plain terms, an IP address is:

• A number or ID assigned to your internet connection
• Given to you by your ISP (Internet Service Provider)
• Used to route traffic back and forth between you and websites

Your ISP is the company you pay for home internet or mobile data (yeah the same one you send way too much money to every month just to be online). You don't invent your IP and you don't usually control it. It gets assigned automatically when you connect.

It's important to understand that an IP identifies a connection on a network, not a person and not even a specific device forever.

Here's what happens in real life, step by step:

1. You turn on your laptop
2. You connect to Wi-Fi
3. Your router talks to your ISP
4. Your connection gets assigned a public IP
5. Now websites know where to send data back

What an IP cannot tell you

Let's focus on the limits, because this is where most myths live. An IP address cannot tell you someone's exact home address. It does not show their apartment number, their street, or which room they're sitting in. At best, it might point to a general area like a city or region, and even that can be inaccurate.

It also cannot tell you:

• The person's full name
• Their phone number
• Their social media accounts
• What device they are using in detail
• Who exactly is sitting behind the screen
• Which football team they support

An IP does not equal a person. Multiple people can share one public IP, and one person can use many different IPs over time. So if someone claims they can fully identify you just from your IP alone, that's either a bluff, or they have access to information far beyond just an IP address.

What someone's IP address can really show you

Alright, now let's talk about what an IP can actually reveal in the real world. As we've already discussed, an IP address is not a magic tool, and it does not show a blinking dot on a map with someone's exact house.

What it can usually show is basic network-level information, such as:

• The country the IP is registered in
• The city or general region (rough estimate, not exact)
• The internet provider (ISP) that owns the IP range
• Whether it belongs to a corporate network, hosting company, or data center

That's pretty much it for normal public lookups. For example, if you check an IP, you might see something like "Germany, Berlin area, ISP: Example Telecom." If someone wanted more precise information, like the exact customer behind that IP at a specific time, that would require access to ISP logs. Internet providers keep records of which customer was assigned which IP and when. Getting that data usually requires legal authority, such as a court order or an official investigation.

Also, very important: using someone's IP address to harass, threaten, intimidate, or scare them is illegal in many countries. Even if you only know their city or ISP, trying to weaponize that information can land you in serious trouble.

So yes, an IP can tell you something. But it's basic network info, not a secret identity file.

Why getting someone's IP is not a magic tracking tool

A lot of people hear the phrase "getting someone's IP" and think they've unlocked some kind of tracking superpower. That's not how it works. One public IP address can represent many different people at the same time.

For example:

• In a house, every device on the same Wi-Fi shares one public IP
• In an office, hundreds of employees can appear under the same IP
• In a coffee shop, strangers on the same network look identical from the outside
• On mobile networks, thousands of users can rotate through shared IP ranges

So even if you manage to get someone's IP, you still do not know exactly who was using that connection at that moment. To narrow it down to a real person, investigators would need access to ISP logs that link IP addresses to customer accounts at a specific date and time.

In simple terms: serious identification is a legal process, not something you do with a random IP lookup tool.

For most people, the smarter move is not trying to track others. It's learning how to protect your own privacy, secure your accounts, and understand what data you expose online. Knowing how IP addresses work should make you more aware, not turn you into a modern Sherlock Holmes.

IP addresses in greater detail

Up to this point, we've covered the basics. In this section, we'll go a bit deeper into how IP addresses actually work: IPv4 vs IPv6, static vs dynamic addresses, public vs private IPs, and why all of this matters in real life. You can skip this part if you only needed a quick overview, but if you want a clearer technical picture, this will help.

Static vs dynamic IP addresses

So, here's yet another important thing: many IP addresses are temporary. Most home connections use dynamic IPs. That means the address can change over time. For example:

1. You have one IP today
2. Your router reconnects
3. Your ISP refreshes your session
4. Next week you have a different IP

On mobile networks, it can change even more often. For everyday users, an IP is usually just a temporary session label, not a lifelong identifier.

Static IPs are the opposite. They stay the same. These are more common for:

• Servers
• Business internet connections
• Hosting providers
• Cloud infrastructure

If you run a website on a cloud server, that server may have a fixed public IP assigned by the host.

But even here, things are not always direct. Many websites sit behind CDNs or reverse proxies. In that case, users see the IP of the CDN provider, not the actual origin server. So even a "stable" IP often represents shared infrastructure, not a single machine and definitely not a specific person.

In short, dynamic IPs are normal for everyday users, static IPs are more common for servers, but neither one equals a human identity.

IPv4 and IPv6

There are two main types of IP addresses:

• IPv4, which looks like four numbers separated by dots, for example 203.0.113.10
• IPv6, which looks much longer and includes letters and colons, for example 2001:0db8:85a3:7f2e:4c9a:1b2d:9e3f:6a10
  • By the way, with IPv6, many providers assign a stable prefix to your connection. Devices often rotate the device part, but the prefix can still be consistent for a while.

You don't need to memorize either format. Just know that both do the same core job: they identify a connection on a network so data knows where to go. If you're wondering which is faster, check out our guide: Which is faster IPv4 or IPv6.

But why do we need two formats in the first place?

Yeah, that's a fair question. Believe it or not, IPv6 exists because... we basically ran out of IPv4 addresses! Not in the "every last one is gone" sense, but the free global supply dried up and there were no new blocks left to hand out like before.

Thing is, when IPv4 was created, people thought the address space was huge. Billions of addresses sounded like more than anyone would ever need. At the time, the internet was mostly universities, research labs, and a few companies. Nobody imagined what was coming. And then the web exploded.

Now everything wants to be online: phones, TVs, cars, fridges, and probably your fancy toaster too. If I told my grandpa 30 years ago that kitchen appliances would become "smart" and need IP addresses, he would've thought I completely lost it. But here we are.

There are only so many possible IPv4 combinations, and we eventually burned through the old supply. So IPv6 was introduced to give us a much larger pool of addresses, basically enough for the internet to keep expanding without hitting that limit again.

Public vs private IP addresses

A lot of confusion comes from mixing up public and private IP addresses.

• A private IP is what your device gets inside your local network. At home, your laptop might have something like 192.168.0.15. That address only works inside your Wi-Fi. It is not visible to the wider internet.
• Your router then uses one public IP address to talk to the outside world. That public IP is what websites see when you visit them.

Here's the simple flow:

• Your laptop → gets a private IP
• Your router → has a public IP
• Websites → only see the public IP

And yes, websites themselves usually also have public IP addresses. If a site is available on the internet, it must have a public IP (or sit behind infrastructure that has one). The only time a server does not use a public IP is when it's inside a private internal network.

So when someone says "I saw your IP," they are usually talking about your public IP, not the 192.168.x.x address inside your house. Those internal addresses are reused by millions of networks and mean nothing outside your own router.

This setup is normal. It's technically called network address translation, but you don't need to remember the term. Just remember this: private IP stays inside your network, public IP is what the internet sees.

What is IP geolocation and why it's often inaccurate

When people talk about "tracking someone by IP," they usually mean IP geolocation.

IP geolocation uses databases that map IP ranges to countries, cities, and internet providers. These databases are built from registration records and network routing data. They do not use satellites or real-time GPS. It's closer to an educated guess than a live tracking system; that's why the results can be wrong.

You might see:

• The wrong city
• The location of the ISP's office instead of the user
• The nearest major city in a region
• A completely different region in some cases

It's not precise, and it's definitely not a house-level tool.

Things get even messier with privacy tools:

• A VPN routes traffic through another server, often in a different country
• Tor routes traffic through multiple relays around the world
• Corporate networks may show the company's central gateway location
• Mobile carriers often use large shared IP pools

So a person sitting in one place might appear to be somewhere else entirely. When you see a "location" from an IP lookup tool, think of it as a rough network estimate, not a live map of someone's physical position.

VPNs were originally built for secure remote access to company networks, not for hiding from the world. Today many people use them for privacy, and in some regions also because of heavy internet censorship. Either way, they make IP-based location even less reliable.

Safe, legal ways to work with IP addresses in real life

Let's move away from the "tracking people" fantasy and talk about real, normal use cases.

IP addresses are used every day in completely legal and practical ways. For example:

• Website owners log IPs for security and debugging
• Companies monitor IPs on internal networks to detect suspicious activity
• Customer support teams check IP regions to prevent fraud
• Security systems use IP data to block spam, bots, or brute force attacks

The key difference is simple: you are working with systems you own or manage, and you have a clear purpose. Not curiosity. Not revenge. Not ego.

For instance, if you run a site and someone tries 500 failed logins in one minute, checking the IP to block that traffic makes sense. If you run an online store and see suspicious orders from a known bad IP range, reviewing that data is part of protecting your business.

This is very different from trying to get someone's IP just to see "where they are." Context and intent matter, my friend.

You still need to follow local laws and your own privacy policy. In many regions, IP addresses are considered personal data. That means you must collect, store, and use them responsibly, and only for the purpose you clearly defined.

If you are working with proxies for scraping, testing, or security research, understand the legal boundaries first. Read up on things like Proxy vs VPN and make sure you know what you are using and why. Also be aware of questions like Is it legal to use proxies before you deploy anything at scale.

Some services, like ScrapingBee, handle IP rotation for web scraping so you are not manually juggling dozens of IPs. That's about infrastructure management, not spying on people. Consent, clear purpose, and compliance with the law always come first.

How to see IP addresses on services you control

This only applies to services you own or manage like your website, API, app – not someone else's. If you run a web server, you already receive the client IP with every request. Most frameworks expose it in a simple way.

For example, in Node.js with Fastify:

fastify.get('/', async (request, reply) => {
  const clientIp = request.ip;
  console.log('Client IP:', clientIp);
  return 'Hello';
});

In Ruby on Rails:

class HomeController < ApplicationController
  def index
    client_ip = request.remote_ip
    Rails.logger.info "Client IP: #{client_ip}"
  end
end

In Django:

def home(request):
    client_ip = request.META.get('REMOTE_ADDR')
    print("Client IP:", client_ip)

One small note: if your application runs behind a reverse proxy, load balancer, or CDN, the IP you see in your code might not be the user’s real IP. It could be the address of the proxy or infrastructure layer in front of your app. Most modern frameworks and hosting platforms handle this correctly when configured properly, but it’s something you should be aware of when working with IP data.

You can also see IP addresses in:

• Server access logs
• Reverse proxy dashboards
• Firewall or CDN panels
• Analytics tools that show visitor regions

A small online shop owner, for example, might review server logs to see where traffic is coming from and block suspicious patterns. That's normal security hygiene. But even here, you must follow privacy laws. If your policy says you log IPs for security, stick to that purpose. Do not profile users beyond what is necessary.

Logging IPs and privacy laws

Note: In this article I share general information — it is not a legal advice and I'm not a lawyer. If you need guidance for a specific situation, talk to a qualified legal professional.

Quick reality check: in many places, IP addresses are considered personal data. Under laws like GDPR in the EU and similar regulations in other regions, an IP address can count as information that relates to an identifiable person. That means you cannot just collect and store IP logs forever "just in case."

This isn't the wild west, so there are rules. If you run a website or app, you should:

• Have a clear reason for logging IPs, such as security or fraud prevention
• Mention it in your privacy policy
• Keep logs only as long as necessary
• Protect that data from leaks or misuse
• Avoid using IP data for unrelated purposes later

The rule is simple: collect less, keep it short, use it only for the reason you stated, and respect the people behind the connections.

How to find the IP address of a public website

Getting the IP address of a public website is easy. Domains have to resolve to an IP through DNS, otherwise the internet would not know where to send traffic. You can simply search for something like "DNS lookup tool" or "domain to IP lookup," paste the domain name, and the service will show you the IP address.

If you prefer the command line, you can use tools like:

• nslookup example.com
• dig example.com
• ping example.com

All of them will show the IP address the domain resolves to. Just keep in mind: this tells you about the server or infrastructure behind the site, not about a specific person.

Many lookup services also show domain registration details. Sometimes you'll see a company name. Sometimes an individual. And very often you'll see privacy protection or a registrar acting as a proxy. Quite often domains are registered through intermediaries or companies in different jurisdictions, including offshore locations. In fact, that's pretty normal and not some secret conspiracy.

In practice, knowing a website's IP address is rarely useful unless you're debugging, testing DNS, or doing infrastructure work. For most people, it's just technical trivia.

Common myths about IP tracking

Myth 1: An IP address gives you someone's exact home address

No, it doesn't. An IP can usually show a country and maybe a rough city-level estimate. It does not reveal a street, apartment number, or building. Getting a real physical address requires ISP logs with timestamps and legal processes, not a random IP lookup tool.

Myth 2: One IP address equals one person

Also wrong. A single public IP can represent an entire household, an office full of employees, or everyone on the same café Wi-Fi. On mobile networks, thousands of users can rotate through shared IP pools. An IP identifies a connection, not a specific human being.

Myth 3: If I get someone's IP, I can fully track them

Getting someone's IP does not unlock a secret tracking dashboard. Without access to provider records and legal authority, you cannot tie that IP to a named individual.

Myth 4: Using a VPN makes you completely untraceable

A VPN hides your home IP from websites, but it does not make you invisible. The VPN provider still sees your connection, and websites still see an IP, just a different one. Privacy tools reduce exposure, but they do not remove accountability or legal boundaries.

Myth 5: If I ban someone's IP, they can never come back

Not true. An IP ban blocks a connection, not a person. Many users have dynamic IPs that change over time. They can also switch networks or use a VPN. There's another issue: as you already know, IP addresses get reassigned. The same IP you banned today might belong to a completely different person tomorrow. If your ban is permanent, you risk blocking random users who did nothing wrong.

IP bans help against obvious abuse, but they are not a permanent solution.

Conclusion

If you came here wondering how to get someone's IP, the real takeaway is this: it is usually simple to see an IP in systems you control, but it is not a key to a person's identity. An IP shows basic network information, not a full personal profile. Use it for security, debugging, and legitimate operations. Respect consent, follow the law, and focus more on protecting privacy than trying to invade it.

Frequently asked questions (FAQs)

Can I get someone's IP address from a message or social media?

In most cases, no. You cannot just "get someone's IP" from a random message or social media profile. Platforms do not expose user IP addresses to other users. You only see an IP if you control the server receiving the connection. Avoid shady "IP grabber" tricks. For scraping infrastructure basics, see Generating random IPs for scraping.

What can someone do if they know my IP address?

Usually, not much. They may see your country or ISP and possibly try basic network probing if your setup is weak. That is why routers and firewalls matter. If you deal with blocking during scraping, read What to do if your IP gets banned.

Can I stop websites and apps from seeing my real IP?

Every site you visit sees an IP because traffic needs a return address. You can mask your home IP with proxies or VPNs, but another IP is still visible. You are not invisible, just using a different exit point. Network setup choices also matter. For example, see Should I use IPv6 at home.

Is it safe and legal to use tools that hide or change my IP?

It depends on your purpose and local law. Proxies are widely used for privacy, testing, and automation, but abusing them can violate terms or laws. The tool itself is not the problem. How you use it is. If you need managed infrastructure, consider a web scraping API instead of juggling raw IP pools yourself.